(I just wanted to repost this truly EXCELLENT posting that was made on the old BBS by poster "Old Pole Burner". I feel that this makes some key points about SPECIFIC improvements that need to be made by modern Railroads.)
(Expired from old Altamont Press Board:
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August 25, 2006 at 4:01 AM Eastern Time :

OldPoleBurner posts regarding: Cost Starlight Delays featured on NPR morning edition today

No one seems to want to say it directly in the earshot of stock holders! The fact is that UP is having another one of its legendary corporate MELT-DOWNS!

Having extensively studied the craft, I don't believe it is entirely fair to blame dispatchers for passenger train delays; though a few might well deserve it. The fact is that they must march to the drummer in Omaha. Or get fired!

What is hard to understand is that the job has become much more difficult in recent years. And not because there are more trains. In fact, there are fewer. The old Cal-P once ran as many as 70 trains a day, with more than half of them scheduled - and mostly on time too. This was accomplished on double track using single direction ABS with timetable and train orders. Now, with Two Main Track CTC and high speed trackage paid for by the State, they can't manage half that many.

So why can't they do it now with all the new-fangled gadgets at the their disposal?. There are several factors. Here are a few that come to mind:

1. Over centralization of corporate authority - Without the rules on the rights of trains to govern field employees and trainmen on site, all decisions must wait for the dispatcher to get around to figuring it out, often on a case by case basis. No general rules govern traffic patterns as they once did.

2. The demise of the dispatchers party line phone limits information transfer between field and office. The radio could replace this, but only if all on the subdivision can hear all transmissions (a true network). That would keep everybody instantly informed, and thereby reduce the dispatchers work load. Unfortunately, today's telephone and radio systems are usually not setup that way.

3. Elimination of field employees has also eliminated the dispatchers eyes and ears in the field.

4. Too many active passing tracks were dismantled in single track territories.

5. Too few crew members are onboard to quickly fix anything that goes wrong.

6. Freight trains are way too big and too cumbersome to be managed quickly. they take too long to get started, stopped, switched, re-inspected, etc.

7. Probably, the most accute problem causing these meltdowns is the lack of margin between actual runtimes verses the hours of service. It takes too long to get over the crew district (because of items 5 & 6) to avoid the risk going dead on the law. Whatever happened to the 8-hour day! At least, if 8 hours were planned, and something went wrong, there would still be 4 hours to fix it.

Oh, I forgot! Trainmen are not paid by the hour - so UP doesn't give a @#%$&, so they try for all they can get. And like the proverbial kid with his hand in the cooky jar - they end up with nothing. Real smart - And these are college trained MBAs too?

Once a crew goes dead on the law, its train must be parked somewhere - hopefully not on the main. But putting it into a siding ties up the siding - resulting in twice the run time between passing points. This one event alone cuts the traffic capacity of the whole line in half. There are instantly too many trains on it. Do this more than one place on a district and you quickly melt down to total grid-lock!

Amtrak's Starlight must then wait for opposing freight trains to run twenty or thirty miles to get in the clear, for each meet or pass! Oh but wait - when it does get in the clear, who's train gets to go - Amtrak's, or UP's. Guess.

This is quite a way to run a railroad! But, alas, not only is UP driving away the passenger - its also driving away the freight, in droves, choking Californa's highways.

Too bad that in this country - stockholder uprisings are useless. Its "Like it or lump it(dump your stock)". The whole lot of them need FIRING. Since this problem is so widespread and chronic throughout the company, The first one fired has to be the one at the top.

This is all very bad for the industry - it will hurt all railroads if it doesn't stop. Already has hurt!

Oh well, I will be retiring soon. And can then focus on more pleasant thoughts - such as a root canal.

OldPoleBurner

PS For more information on train dispatching, Thomas White's "Elements of Train Dispatching" (2 volumes) may be of interest. I believe it is still available at several rail oriented websites.